U.S. primaries are the purest form of democracy. Ordinary Joes and Janes get to vote for their party’s standard-bearer in presidential elections.

Here’s where it gets a little strange.

If a voter registers as a Democrat in his state’s primary, he is not obligated to vote for whomever Democrats elect. He is free to vote Republican. It’s a secret ballot.

Presidential primaries separate men from boys. They are a punishing grind of one state campaign followed by another and yet another.

A candidate needs a strong constitution and deep pockets.

In 1980, I was a fly on the wall for a week in the New Hampshire primary. I was licking my wounds as a losing campaign manager in Ottawa in a kamikaze run against Liberal cabinet minister Jean-Luc Pepin.

It was good to get out of Ottawa.

My companion was “Mac” McCormally, editor of the Burlington Hawk Eye daily newspaper of Iowa. McCormally was a regular columnist in 17 other papers in his chain. He was also a weekly host on a half-hour public affairs TV show out of Des Moines.

McCormally and I were longtime friends.

He was flying to Ottawa in his brand new Cessna and would land at CFB Uplands.

“How will I recognize your plane, Mac?” I asked.

“Easy, it’s painted in the colours of an Iowa cornfield — green and gold,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it when McCormally taxied to the terminal. The plane was painted green and gold, but Cessna had over-egged the pudding. McCormally’s plane looked like a John Deere tractor with wings.

McCormally was a teenage U.S. marine sergeant who was badly wounded by a Japanese mortar on Iwo Jima beach. His left arm dangled, held only by a strip of flesh. Surgery saved the arm, but McCormally had limited use.

His Silver Star for gallantry and his Purple Heart were displayed on his den wall.

He was an “Okie” during the Depression. He was elected to the Kansas legislature. He won a Pulitzer Prize with a Kansas City daily.

McCormally was the first southern editor to support Jimmy Carter, and the Carters were often overnight guests at the home of McCormally and his wife Peg on the Mississippi.

McCormally had White House press credentials, which opened doors for us in New Hampshire.

Carter did not campaign, but sent his wife Rosalynn.

She arrived with Lauren Bacall. Rosalynn Carter spotted us, gave her Secret Service handlers the slip and gave McCormally a bear hug.

I was gobsmacked. Bacall was gorgeous. All I could think of uttering was: “Marry me or I’ll kill myself.”

Carter entered the primary an underdog, but regained the lead thanks to an Iranian ayatollah.

Carter wound up with 51.13 per cent, followed by Ted Kennedy with 37.58 per cent, and now California Gov. Jerry Brown third and far away from double digits.

Brown made sense to me, but New Hampshire voters saw him as a weird futurist. Media called him “Governor Moonbeam.” Thirty-two years on, he would be considered moderate.

Lyndon LaRouche, a nuisance candidate who later served prison time, sandbagged Kennedy. He did a land office business selling posters, bumper stickers and other pieces of scurrilous election material.

One bumper sticker read: “Ted Kennedy For Lifeguard.” Another read: “More People Have Died In Ted Kennedy’s Car Than On Three Mile Island.” Coming shortly after Kennedy’s “Chappaquiddick incident,” LaRouche administered the coup de grace.

His crude bumper stickers dissing Jane Fonda are best left out of a family newspaper.

The New Hampshire primary was the first of many, a bellwether. Tiny New Hampshire sent few delegates to a convention, but winning there was seen as early momentum.

Driving through Dixville Notch, N.H., we stopped at the Balsams Hotel. I stood in the room where, on the eve of every presidential election, a handful of locals gather in the “ballot room” to cast the nation’s very first votes.

The old saying “as Maine goes, so goes the nation” is usually bang on. How goes the nation when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are tied with five votes each, as they were after Dixville Notch’s 10 registered voters cast their ballots at midnight on election day? Now we know.

Glace Bay-born Pat MacAdam has been a fly on the wall in national politics for half a century. He served as a spear carrier for prime ministers John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney, and as press officer at Canada’s High Commission in London. He’s in Ottawa (Bytown) now and can be reached at eyeopenerrogers.com.